NX Class: Can we take the Daedalus class serious now?

[Vincent Law]

That's a somewhat simplified view. In light of the lack of information that was available, intelligence certainly would have been a priority. I also do not share the view the the military only concerns itself with killing people and breaking things. I, for one, cannot see any difference between Captain Archer or a military commander carrying out this mission, but then I view Starfleet as a military force, even if it's a relatively ineffective one. Also, Captain Archer wasn't a very good commanding officer, so replacing him with someone who was competent would not have been a negative.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Except Archer's meant to be unique in his ability to bring peace to the galaxy - Andorians and Vulcans feuded for centuries until he came along. Four years later they're founding members of the Coalition of Planets.

 

[Vincent Law]

It's unfortunate that the way he was written never really lived up to the informed ability that was set up for him.

 

[Timo]

When Archer was originally chosen to command NX-01, the mission apparently wasn't to deal with the dangers and opportunities of outer space: of those, Earth knew very little. Rather, the entire Warp Five project seemed to be aimed at breaking free of the real or imagined limitations imposed by the Vulcans. Starfleet wouldn't really need a peacemaker or a superb tactician for such a mission; Starfleet would need a brash adventurer who really, really hated the Vulcans and would do everything the way Vulcans never would. For that, the son of Henry Archer was the ideal choice. (And yes, him knowing his way around the Warp Five project no doubt helped, too.)

Would that sort of a person still be the ideal choice for the anti-Xindi mission? Perhaps not. But by then, Archer would have amassed unprecedented experience in dealing with outer space. And, somewhat ironically, Archer would be just about the only skipper in the Fleet who could liaise with much-needed Vulcan expertise, thanks to his unique relationship with T'Pol; no other Vulcan would have helped Earth there, and few other humans would have been helped by T'Pol.

That Archer got some peace and cooperation out of his adventures was a bit incidental. What he excelled in was poking his nose in things the Vulcans argued were off limits, asking questions Vulcans didn't want asked, and forcing aliens to care about humans, rather than just look the other way (even if that often equated making enemies of said aliens, at least initially).

... where it took six weeks for the Enterprise to reach the expanse, the Intrepid battle group would have arrived after three or four months...

And would never catch up with the Enterprise, because she kept on moving. There's no "battle group" if one ship is ten times faster than the rest...

Add to this the great risks of operating in the Expanse in the first place. A group of weaker ships loitering there "in support of" NX-01 would probably lead to unacceptable losses, while the "support" they offered would be negligible and any independent work they could do in studying the Xindi would be less useful still. Perhaps a support fleet floating just outside the Expanse might help - but dangers lurked even there, and e.g. the Klingons might make short work of Earth's little isolated flotilla. Earth could never send anything amounting to "force" - and doing the sensible alternative and sending "stealth" would be defeated if a useless flotilla was sent to mark the wake of the Enterprise for the enemy.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

Since Xindi ships seemingly can't be persued or tracked while in hyperspace (or whatever it is they use), sending a fleet to the edge of the Delphic Expanse would have been an epic waste of time. Both Xindi weapons appeared in the Sol system, the first one right in orbit.

 

[Timo]

Yup. The possible utility of such a fleet would have been as a frontline support asset for NX-01; Archer could have returned to the fleet to get replacements for the people he got killed, to get more ammo or fuel, or simply to get a breather in at least somewhat armed and secure location. But even that would merely have distracted from the storytelling without being necessitated by in-story logic.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vincent Law]

The point of a battle group is that all of them would have moved at the same speed. That's what makes them a group. And yes, that does make more sense than simply sending one ship against an enemy that threatens to destroy your entire planet. Which is also the reason Enterprise's crew should have been replaced by military personnel if one wants to hold the opinion that Earth Starfleet is not a military itself.

But then, not much of that Xindi storyline makes sense, least of all when it comes to the defense of Earth. When Enterprise returned to the Sol System in "The Expanse" there were fellow Starfleet ships there to meet it and to help drive off the attacking Klingon ship. Yet it took a single Andorian ship to defend Earth when the Xindi sphere appeared at the end of the season. At the very least there should have been a fleet there to defend the planet.

 

[T'Girl]

... where it took six weeks for the Enterprise to reach the expanse, the Intrepid battle group would have arrived after three or four months...

And would never catch up with the Enterprise, because she kept on moving.

There would be no reason for the Intrepid group to "catch up" with the Enterprise.

There's no "battle group" if one ship is ten times faster than the rest...

But if all the starships in the Intrepid group were operating at the the same speed, they would in fact be a battle group or a task force. The Enterprise could operate separately

A group of weaker ships loitering there "in support of" NX-01

Except the Intrepid group wouldn't be in the expanse just as a support organization for the Enterprise, anymore than the Enterprise was solely a support craft for the Intrepid group. For Earth to project as many assets as possible into the expanse would allow multiple avenues of investigation to be followed. On refection, actually the Enterprise would make for a good scout, scouts (both in land and sea forces) are usually faster moving than the larger main group. And usual travel ahead of it.

And other than in the area of speed, there no reason to believe that the other Earth starships would be "weaker" then the Enterprise in any way. The only thing that made the Enterprise unique were her warp five engines, and maybe her age. Reactors, polarized hull plating, sensors, torpedoes, phase cannons ... all would be common technology amoung the Earth's starships. The episode The Expanse showed that the Enterprise didn't even carry photonic torpedoes until just prior to departing for the expanse, and the Enterprise was refitted to carry them very quickly, it would have be the same for any of Earth's starships.

And the Enterprise might not be the youngest ship in the fleet. While there seem to be evidence that Earth can only build one NX at a time, however if there exist the ability to construct more than one starship simultaneously, the previous design might have remained in production.

 

[Timo]

Agreed that the only thing separating NX-01 from the rest would be speed - and, thanks to that, range.

But speed/range might be of crucial importance in defeating the Xindi. In the time the Intrepid reached the Delphic Expanse, the Enterprise would already have visited a dozen worlds and gathered key intelligence. In the time the Enterprise adventure concluded, just in the nick of time to save Earth, the Intrepid would still be combing through the first dozen star systems and not really contributing much - especially since communications with other units would be very difficult, and at worst the Intrepid and the Enterprise would be visiting the same systems!

Remember that the speed jump to warp five was in "Broken Bow" claimed to bring "thousands of inhabited planets" to Earthling fingertips that supposedly had not held those previously. Warp five was supposed to be a hundred times as fast as the gold standard of the 2120s; even if the Intrepid were a bit newer and faster than that, she'd not be capable of reaching a meaningful number of Expanse worlds within a meaningful time. Heck, mere transit to the region might have taken anything between sixty to six hundred weeks against Archer's six. If missile buildup in Cuba threatens your homeland, and you need photographs, you don't send a man in a canoe as a backup for the RF-101 recce jet. You might send a recce-configured old Mustang or Lightning as such a backup - but in the ENT universe, there were no old Mustangs, only old Nieuports or Wright Flyers at the very best.

That is, NX-01 really was a quantum leap in propulsion, not the culmination of gradual work; apparently, Vulcan resistance to human expansion had forced this all-eggs-in-one-experimental-basket approach for the past half a century. If a ship capable of, say, half the speed of NX-01 existed and was allowed to operate, said Vulcan resistance could not exist as a plot point.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

Warp five was supposed to be a hundred times as fast

That's probably overstating it a fair amount. Warp five Enterprise's verses warp four Intrepid's would be more like a tripling in speed, maybe a quadrupling of speed at best. The Enterprise was the next notch up in speed yes, but only the next one.

the Enterprise adventure concluded, just in the nick of time to save Earth
communications with other units would be very difficult

Communications would be difficult and the Enterprise would save the homeworld in the last reel.

Problem with those being reasons to send only the Enterprise alone is that the Earth's government and Starfleet wouldn't have known either of those facts. They would not have know that the Enterprise wasn't going to be destroyed a couple of months into the mission (which almost happen a few times). Given that the previous Xindi weapon fired within second of appearing, maintaining a fleet presents near Earth was useless.

If you have one steam ship that can do thirty knots and several sailing warships that can do ten knots, you send them all.

 

[itchy01ca]

Daedalus will ALWAYS be the ugly looking ship from the encyclopedia/chronology. The akiraprise is a damn cop-out. I like the show, but the ship in my mind is absolute sacrilege. Please, get a brain and design a ship that actually looks like it came BEFORE the constitution. I say, forget most of enterprise. People think Gene would have hated DS9? Nope. He would have hated enterprise for what it did to trek.

 

[Skywalker]

Trek was dying before ENT even premiered. It was just on life support from 2001 to 2005.

 

[itchy01ca]

Trek was dying before ENT even premiered. It was just on life support from 2001 to 2005.

Yea voyager wasn't all that hot. But it was better than Enterprise. I've been rematching old episodes and can certainly understand why most people didn't like it. There are some really cool shows, but others that drag the good ones down.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Daedalus will ALWAYS be the ugly looking ship from the encyclopedia/chronology. The akiraprise is a damn cop-out. I like the show, but the ship in my mind is absolute sacrilege. Please, get a brain and design a ship that actually looks like it came BEFORE the constitution. I say, forget most of enterprise. People think Gene would have hated DS9? Nope. He would have hated enterprise for what it did to trek.

STXI made the ships 20x bigger, redesigned the USS Enterprise and had a beer brewery for an engine room, yet it was the most successful Trek film ever. The design of the NX-01 Enterprise had no impact whatsoever on the show's success or faliure.

Gene Rodenberry didn't like STVI (and considered it apocraphyl like he did STV, TAS and much of TOS) because of the idea Kirk and other Starfleeters would be racist against the Klingons. Since DS9 featured Federation's Section 31 attempting genocide against the Founders, I doubt he would have approved.

 

[Vincent Law]

Am I the only one who doesn't particularly care what Gene Roddenberry thought or would have thought? Yes, he created the franchise, and he also started TNG, but under his leadership TNG really wasn't very good. Rick Berman is largely responsible for TNG becoming as good and as popular as it is now, but I don't hesitate to call him out on his failures with VOY and ENT now either. In the end what matters to me is how good the story and characters are, not whether a dead man might have approved of it.

 

[itchy01ca]

I actually totally agree with you. Gene was a tool sometimes, but it's funny to see how many trekkies try to come to his defense like he was some messiah. He really had some crappy ideas and trying to keep starfleet from NOT being military and being all peaceful and crap was his worst. Also, i've talked to a lot of trekkies about enterprise and they say they didn't watch the show because of the akiraprise. So yes, in a way it did impact the show to a large degree. People don't watch because of a crappy ship, low ratings, canceled. STXI was a complete reboot of the franchise, which means people were looking for something new and different from the norm.